


perfection in the proverbs (desolation in disorder)

by Anonymous



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bulimia, Eating Disorders, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 16:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20910710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “One who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7)Two boys sit by the edge of a lake in a cabin in the woods. A god lived there once, the same god who slipped from their skinny fingers. They let go of their ideas of God and embrace the idea of each other instead.





	perfection in the proverbs (desolation in disorder)

“One who is full loathes honey from the comb, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7)

——

Peter is losing weight.

Harley sits across the cafeteria table from the other boy and watches as he pulls four sandwiches, three slices of pizza, two slices of cake, one family-sized bag of Doritos, and half a dozen donuts from his lunch bag. Peter eats it all then stands in the lunch line to buy a tray of cafeteria food. Harley watches with gleaming eyes as the soggy carrots are pushed aside, but the steaming baked potato is smothered in bacon bits and sour cream and scarfed down. When Peter stands, Harley catches a glimpse of the box of s’mores-flavored pop tarts in his backpack, but before he can say anything, Ned mumbles something to Peter, and they leave the cafeteria hastily. 

Harley turns to MJ with wide eyes, but she’s not looking at Peter’s retreating back with a suspicious expression. She’s looking at Harley. 

“It’s not like you’ve never done it,” she says. 

“That’s not the point. Peter-“

“Needs the same help you do.” She hands him a tangerine.

——

The tangerine rots, forgotten on the counter of the kitchenette in Harley’s lab. He’s working on a suit of his own, made of nanotech and broken memories and the half-finished schematics of a suit Tony planned to build for him, but that project is forgotten too, just for the moment. 

“Emptiness,” he dictates to a listening ABBIE (Artificial Badass Bitch In Ear). “My body runs on emptiness.”

There’s a half-forgotten melody playing in the back of his mind. It sounds like Christmas, but it’s played like a funeral march. 

“Emptiness fills the hole that grief tears into me. Isn’t that a beautiful paradox?”

——

Ned pulls the tape measurer tighter around Peter’s waist, and it’s saying “have a second helping of dessert at dinner.” (He will, and then maybe he’ll have a third or a fourth, if he’s feeling up to it.)

“Ugh, I’m so jealous,” Ned says, hugging his arms around himself subconsciously. 

Peter nods, but he runs his fingers over the slight jut of his ribcage and wishes it was more prominent. 

“How do you do it, man? I know you have a super spider metabolism, but it still defies the laws of anatomy, human or spider, to be as small as you are.”

Peter shrugs as he slips on Harley’s old Rose Hill High School sweatshirt. “It doesn’t matter. You’re fine, Ned. You’re perfect.”

He ignores the way Ned glows. He pretends not to notice the way Ned brushes their hands together more often as they build the next Lego set on their list. 

——

The penthouse is dark when Harley and Peter return late after Flash’s party. Pepper’s sobs can be heard from the master bedroom, and Morgan’s curled up on the couch, staring out the window as she listens to her mother. 

“I’m hungry,” is all she says. “I want a cheeseburger.”

That hurts too much, feels too raw, so when Peter suggests, “Well, I want pancakes,” Harley herds them all into his car and drives them to iHop. 

Morgan nibbles on a dry pancake in her hands, and neither Harley nor Peter has the heart to tell her to eat it properly. Peter’s too busy smothering his pancakes (and his eggs, and his bacon) in syrup and sugar from packets, and Harley’s too busy grimacing at his cup of black coffee that’s definitely more water than beans. 

Peter finishes one plate and then another before running to the bathroom. 

“Is Petey okay?” he hears Morgan ask. The sound of his own retching drowns out Harley’s answer. 

——

Harley’s mother died during the Blip. He doesn’t know what happened, he doesn’t know how her Bible ended up in his possession, but he’s reading it now, late at night because Pepper locked his lab, and he doesn’t really feel like hacking into FRIDAY to override the lockdown. 

He flips it open to a random page and reads the line his mother highlighted: “But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.”

Harley dog-ears the page and climbs out the fire escape. 

Peter, who lives with May and Happy in the apartment below the penthouse, isn’t in his room when Harley knocks on the window, but the curtains are open, and a light is shining from under his bathroom door. Harley picks the window lock and clambers in, opening Peter’s bathroom door. 

Peter is in there, spitting blood into the bathroom sink. He doesn’t look up when the door opens, just dry-heaves one more time before looking up with angry eyes. “Are you spying on me? Did you hack into Karen?”

Harley takes Peter’s chin and tilts it up. “No. I’m just concerned about you, you idiot.”

Peter twists away. “There’s nothing to be concerned about. Just a bad cough, that’s all.”

But when Harley grabs his wrist and forces him to unfurl his first, there’s blood underneath his fingernails. 

“I know what you’re doing,” Harley tells him. 

Peter snatches his hand back, the force of it causing Harley to stumble back and hit the wall. “You don’t know shit.”

“You’re not going to find him.”

“Who?”

“Tony.” 

Peter’s face closes off, and he snarls. “I’m not looking for Tony, and if I was, I know where to find him: six feet under and rotting.”

Harley flinches and swallows thickly. “But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.”

“Tony wasn’t God,” Peter bites back, but the fact that he understands what Harley is trying to say in Bible verses speaks volumes on its own.

——

Peter sits in front of the TV in the living room, mindlessly eating out of a pint of ice cream. A box of donuts lies empty at his feet.

“The supervillain who calls himself Doctor Octopus strikes again. In the face of rising crime rates and the emergence of more supervillains, the public only has one question: where is Spider-Man?”

“They don’t need me,” he sighs, grabbing a bag of popcorn and throwing some at the screen. “They survived five years without me, didn’t they? They’ll survive a few more. No one needs me anymore.”

He runs to the bathroom. Once, news like that would have hurt him. He used to chant the names of the people he couldn’t save, of the people he killed, as he fell asleep at night. Now, he watches the world from a distance. His world has narrowed down into the crippling grief at his core and the scrape of his nails against the back of his throat that somehow makes the constant pain of grief subside, replaced by sour victory as he flushes the bile down the drain. Sometimes it surprises him what human beings are capable of. 

They move on, one way or another. 

——

“ABBIE, open the folder Gremlin.”

“Yes, Harley.” The young, girly voice comes out of the speakers in his room. The tablet in his hands shifts to a screen that shows a collection of pictures and videos, all featuring a young blond boy with shaggy hair and a little girl with freckles and braids in her hair. Harley scrolls past them all but clicks on the link at the very end: “Rose Hill High School student commits suicide.”

“Abbie Keener, 17, disappeared in the Blip along with brother Harley Keener, 21. An orphan, Keener was placed in foster care upon return. She took her life months later.”

“ABBIE,” Harley chokes out. “Play the slideshow, please.”

In his sister’s voice, the AI says, “Yes, Harley.”

Harley watches his favorite memories and doesn’t bother holding back his tears.

——

_ Regardless of the type of loss experienced, food can easily become a tangible way in which comfort is sought. For individuals experiencing grief in the form or loss or trauma, the chaos that results will often leave them feeling out of control. Food can commonly become a way in which one feels able to establish control, such as through means of restricting calories, or a way in which to find comfort or relief. _

——

Peter hands the phone back to Ned and smiles. “I don’t have an eating disorder.”

And because Ned is smitten, he accepts the denial and smiles, launching into a different subject. 

Peter wonders if it’s wrong to manipulate his best friend’s feelings like that. He doesn’t wonder if it’s wrong to skip AP Physics to vomit in the bathroom. 

——

When MJ shows Harley the same article, he reads the whole thing through and asks her to send it to him. “Peter-“ he starts.

“Peter has a problem, but that’s not what I’m trying to tell you.”

Harley nods, but he doesn’t listen, and MJ looks desperate for a fleeting moment, but at least she doesn’t say anything more. 

ABBIE reads the article aloud, the words sounding melodic over muted country music. Harley tinkers to the rhythm of words like “grief,” “loss,” “trauma,” “anorexia,” and “bulimia.” The suit needs a size adjustment. 

——

Peter comes to him one day, shaking and scared because he can’t see straight, and his teeth have been eaten away by the acid that spills from his stomach. “How do you handle it?”

What Peter doesn’t know is that Harley actually isn’t handling it, unless you count his coping mechanism as handling it. Peter’s desperation has left a space for Harley’s twisted religion of Bible verses welded to nanotechnology to slide in.

He reaches into his bedside table drawer and pulls out a worn Bible. Pages torn out, pages folded, words highlighted and underlined, scribbles in the margins. He hands the recording of the darkest workings of his brain to Peter with a smile. The boy slips through in awe.

“You’ve read all of this?”

“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.” It’s amazing how much time he used to spend preparing food and eating it, time better spent in his lab or with his proverbs.

_You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.”_ _(1 Corinthians 6:13)_

_ Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4) _

Ramblings about food and grief and general emptiness, an attempt to read between the lines.

_ The dead can no longer eat, and the mourning have no reason to. _

_ There is science in counting calories, math in measuring food, solace in starving every day. _

_ Peter eats something to feel nothing. I eat nothing to feel something. _

“A page for every day spent hungry,” Harley clarifies.

Peter’s head shoots up. “What?”

A wicked grin creeps up on Harley’s face. “Let me show you.”

Harley leans forward for a kiss over the battered pages of his book, and a ripple of technology runs up Peter’s skin. His fingers thicken and tan as Harley shrinks and shrivels, flickers and disappears, but there is a skeleton in his place. Peter pulls back, but he doesn’t look like Peter anymore. He’s covered in a nanotech suit that looks exactly like Harley, and Harley is laid bare, vulnerable, exposed, and emaciated for the world to see.

The world looks away. Peter can’t seem to.

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Harley reaches out to Peter with a trembling hand.

“What the hell?” Peter cries, and it’s disconcerting to hear his voice coming from Harley’s body. “I thought you were doing fine.”

Harley shrugs. “It’s symbolic. My heart is empty, and so is my body.”

Peter looks at him with disgust. “You’re sick.”

“So are you.” Harley flicks his fingernail, dented and yellow, against the chest of the suit. It breaks away from Peter’s body to form again on his.

——

The world slips away from Peter’s mind. It shrinks down to the subtleties between feeling full and feeling empty, and when it only takes two fingers to feel like he’s in control, he’s practically invincible. 

Harley builds a world around himself, a suit of nanotech that keeps the questions away and the grief out. He leaves a Peter-shaped hole in it, just in case. 

Peter controls the world by eating and expelling. Harley controls the world with emptiness. In the end, the result is the same.

Two boys sit by the edge of a lake in a cabin in the woods. A god lived there once, the same god who slipped from their skinny fingers. They let go of their ideas of God and embrace the idea of each other instead. 

They kiss each other like control can be found on the other’s lips. The world is uncontrollable, but as two skeletons fade into ghosts, hand-in-hand, it doesn’t have to feel that way anymore.

——

“Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7)

  
  



End file.
